Too many strawberries?

I just cut up most of the 2 quarts of strawberries I got at the farm this week. Mixed half with local honey I bought at The Food Project. Honey gives the strawberries a tangy kick. And at lunch today a coworker reminded me that eating local honey can also stave off local pollen allergies. Good stuff.

The other half I froze for smoothies later on. I also made a ground beef curry with Chestnut Farms beef and bok choy from The Food Project.

I have a couple farmer's markets I want to visit soon. Medford has what looks like a modest market, and I'll be able to get Where Pigs Fly bread there. I don't really eat much bread, but since I've discovered buttered toast with turnip slices, I've had to keep some around. The market blog is here: http://medfordsquaremarket.blogspot.com/. They are open Thursdays from 1 P.m. to 7 P.M. in Medford Square. It looks like they try to be a little more than just a farmer's market, and they include weekly family activities starting this season.

Arlington also has a market, and I know that Chestnut Farms attends. They told me that you can get fish there, so I have to check it out. They are open on Wednesday from 1 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. in the Russell Commons parking lot on Rt. 60, just east of Mass Ave. I'm also looking for local yogurt and cheese. And raw milk, but I guess that's illegal. Let me know if you have a cow. I just want to try it.

The commonwealth of Massachusetts runs a great, but not exhaustive, listing of farmer's markets in all counties: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/farmers_markets.htm. There seems to be a dearth of markets in the Shrewsbury / Grafton /...boroughs area. What's up with that?

Tomorrow Elena and I are going to Strawberry Fest 2008 at Wilson Farms. I hear tell that we get free strawberry shortcake. Can't miss that! (If you don't want to miss it, details here: http://www.wilsonfarm.com/what.html.)

Go green!

So, if you're gonna choose between green zucchini and yellow summer squash on the eve of a Celtics/Lakers game, go with the zucchini. I did, and look what happens.

Today's farm share from The Food Project:
- 1 summer squash (I chose zucchini)
- 1 head of lettuce
- 1/3 bag of salad mix (it's mizuna time!)
- 1 bunch of chard (lots of colors: yellow, orange, green, bright pink/red)
- 2 handfuls of bok choy
- 6 hakurei turnips
- 1/2 pint of snow peas
- 2 quarts (!) of strawberries

The strawberries are plentiful. You could go find your own spot on the field, squat and just gather a quart. These are not your normal strawberries. One thing you have to learn is that the farm share is not the grocery store. So the strawberries might be small and shaped all kindsa ways, but they are also more intensely flavored. Some are sweeter, some just taste more strawberry.

I have to buckle down this week and really start cooking. I've been eating out a lot. When I was a little kid, we went out maybe twice per year for special occassions. It seems like nowadays, you eat out for special occassions twice a week. Birthdays, classes finished, project finished, it's a rainy day...the excuses are endless. I have to get my condo in better shape (moved in a month ago and still have some boxes) and then I'll have to have people over for dinner instead. And eat chard. We'll see if I can sell that one! The Food Project printed a recipe for a chard pie and another for chard with raisins and olives. Interesting.

Foraging for wild edibles

I'm planning to join the Massachusetts chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) www.nofamass.org. (For my friends and family in New Hampshire, their chapter is at http://www.nofanh.org/.)

I picked up their 2008-2009 Organic Food Guide at Chestnut Farms last week. It has a map that shows different organic farms and where to shop, and includes listings for CSAs, farm stands, and farmer's markets. I had no idea there was so much activity, and I think it's just of farms associated with the magazine. I wasn't able to find The Food Project in there.

The main reason that I am joining is that I wanted to take my brother to Belchertown, my old stomping ground, for a workshop Foraging for Wild Edibles. Now, don't all sign up, because I haven't signed up yet and I want there to be space! Russ Cohen runs this workshop and shows us two dozen of the 150 species of wild edibles in MA. You can read a Boston Globe article about Cohen: For this nature lover, the time is ripe for something wild. I've heard it's a great experience.

An aside

Celtics won! Dreams revived. Eat your greens, everyone.

Wilson Farms and dinner

After work today I went to Wilson Farms to do a little gift hunting. Right now I have the Celtics game on, and I'm trying to avoid watching it because it's too depressing. (C'mon guys, bring back those childhood memories!)

Wilson's Farm (www.wilsonfarm.com) is in Lexington, MA, and sells vegetables and fruit from their farm, but also imports veggies from all over. They also sell beautiful plants and shrubs, as well as pots, fertilizers, seeds, bulbs, and whatever for your garden. All at high-end prices. As far as I can tell, not everything is organic. The farm has been around since 1884, and I just missed a farm tour today! Oh well. It looks like they are every other Thursday from 6:30-8 PM. They have a strawberry fest coming up June 21 & 22 from 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM. It should be good times.

While I was at Wilson's, they were selling asparagus for $1 a bunch. My farm doesn't grow asparagus (no idea why!) so of course I grabbed a bunch. I had to go to Trader Joe's to pick up some heavy cream, because my sister and I have a problem. We somehow had three and a half dozen eggs at the beginning of the month. She bought some, I bought some from the meat farm, and it's just hard to consume that many eggs. The solution? Asparagus frittata.

I took a recipe from Wilson's, and Elena and I teamed up and it came out great. We used up six eggs too and have plenty frittata for breakfast.

I should clarify that the turnips from the farm are hakurei turnips. They are small white turnips with edible greens, crisp with a touch of radish flavor. The farm suggested that we cook less, and that a nice snack would be radishes or the turnips sliced on buttered toast. We tried it out, and it was fantastic, especially with our eggy, cheesy frittata.

It turns out, and I knew this, that I am terrible at cooking meat. It's probably my mom's Irish/English influence. (Hi Mom! Mom makes really good cookies, I can tell you that.) I horribly overcooked a ham steak, so I had to make bean soup with it the next day. I tried cooking a hamburger for only three minutes a side, though, and it came out wonderfully. I had turnip sliced on top and lots of lettuce. The farm meat is very lean, so you have to add veggies and oil to make it work, and cook for 30% less time. It's counter intuitive. But man, when you do it right, so much better.

I think I'm going to have too much food this summer, so I'm hoping I can discipline myself to freeze more. I am trying to buy less and waste less.

Strawberries!

Last week's veggie share was a bit disappointing due to the cold, dry weather. But then it rained for two days and has been in the mid to high nineties. The reward? Strawberries!

Last year I didn't get a strawberry until July. I remember that when my siblings and I were little, we played a game called SimFarm. Part of the game was selling our crop on the futures market before it was released. You could make a killing if you sold your crop of oranges for $30,000, because by harvest time it was only worth $12,000. Unfortunately, the game let you sell it that high almost every time, so it was pretty easy to upgrade your farmhouse to have a swimming pool.

The point is that in commodities futures, you never know quite how everything is going to work out. What's terrible for lettuce is apparently great for strawberries. My love for strawberries is about 300 times that of my love for lettuce.

Note to self: remember to NOT wear heels to the farm. There's nothing like clomping around a strawberry patch in heels on a hot summer's day.

The haul this week:
- 1 head of lettuce
- 1/2 a bag of spinach
- 6 turnips with greens
- 2 radishes with greens
- 1/2 a pint of peas (pick your own)
- 1 pint of strawberries (pick your own)
- 1 bunch of dill
- 1 bunch of mint

The summery scent of freshly picked strawberries, dill, and mint wafted over me as I sat in Rt. 2 traffic on the way home.

Liz and John's trip to Chestnut Farms

On Sunday, my brother John and I trekked out to Hardwick, MA for the semi-annual open house at Chestnut Farms. I called the day "Meet Your Meat."

Despite being a steamy summer day, we had a great time. My brother told me a few times that he was jealous of the family's nine-year-old, Sam, because he got to live on a farm and work with animals. I knew John had visited a farm when he was younger and really enjoyed it. He gets along great with the animals, except when he decides to chase chickens around for a half hour.

I didn't think he'd catch the mean black chicken, and yet...

The chickens don't want to be caught. In fact, between John and a couple of three-year-old kids, all six chickens escaped. I felt kinda bad about this and let the farmers know, but they said, oh don't worry about it. Chickens go home once it gets dark. Kind of like carrier pigeons.

Here's me with a red-headed chicken:

The chickens we caught are meat chickens, but the ones that lay eggs live in a school bus that has a plank out to a yard. Caroline, their daughter who is going to Smith in the fall, pointed out the "laying an egg" sound. "It's a pretty distinctive sound." And it seemed to be going on pretty constantly in the bus. Eggs everywhere.

Piggies! There was a couple from Somerville there asking a lot of questions. One question was, "Does that pig taste different than that pig?" I was sort of taken aback by that one, but I had to remember, yes, these pigs will be my food in a few months. The answer is that the flavor of the meat depends on the feed, not the breed.

Kim said that they brought a bunch of pregnant sheep to the barn in the hopes that they would lamb the week before the open house. And they all obliged. I thought this little guy was cute. The sheep were pretty hot and breathed heavily. They'll be sheared in a week or so.

Me with a lamb (so soft).

John with a lamb. There was also a goat, "Lizzy, why can't I have a goat?"

I asked Kim if they had sheepdogs or llamas. She said they tried llamas but it didn't work. They got out. Their neighbors were "from the city" and had spent $5,000 on their landscaping, and the llamas went over and ate it all. You would think this would be a disaster. Kim said they tried for days to chase down the llamas, and apologized to the neighbors. When they couldn't catch the animals, she told the neighbors that they'd have them shot instead. The neighbors wouldn't hear of it. They built a place for the llamas on their land and co-adopted them, and they are just fine without their landscaping. Too funny. I love western MA.

Be a local hero! Buy locally grown!

I need to post some thoughts on going local at some point. For example, how do I replace coconut milk in my cooking? And avocadoes? Important questions...